The development of new materials and devices for photonics-based applications generally requires an extremely lengthy and expensive process where molecular engineers, chemists, materials scientists and device designers conduct extensive laboratory measurements in multimillion dollar laboratories. The development cycle could be greatly accelerated if the promising materials are first designed on computer-aided-design (CAD) software and then tested via computer simulation. However, no user-friendly optical CAD-like software exists that can simulate the complex linear and nonlinear interactions that occur when light or other electromagnetic radiation interacts with highly nonlinear optical materials. In particular, no easy-to-use optical CAD software is available that can accurately model both electromagnetic radiation propagation through a material and simultaneously model light-induced transitions that occur between energy levels of the material, e.g., energy transfer or up-conversion.
Most of known traditional techniques for simulating the nonlinear response of materials to high intensity electromagnetic radiation or laser beams are both difficult to implement and computationally very expensive. The major disadvantage of conventional methods for computing photophysical processes in linear and nonlinear materials or devices is their limited applicability, since the methods are generally targeted for a specific range of kinetics, materials or devices. A minor change in the material characteristics or optical interactions can lead to a major rewriting of the software, or require a completely new algorithm and new program, which is very laborious and sometimes can require months to years to write and debug.
Moreover, traditional analysis techniques are not able to easily simulate materials having more than one composition or materials that are composed of layers of differing compositions. The task of simulating a composite or layered material whose constituents are modeled by different methods may take a significant amount of time to combine and debug different software pieces which in most of the cases lack interface compatibility.
In addition, traditional theoretical/numerical analyses of laser beam transmission through nonlinear absorbing materials usually have involved many simplifying assumptions that narrowly limited their general applicability. For example, most traditional propagation/transmission analyses neglect several molecular excited states that are needed to explain the experimental data, particularly at high incident energies. The methods usually are unable to simulate ultrashort laser pulses and multi-photon processes which are becoming increasingly important in light-material interactions.
Parilov and Potasek in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/559,093 disclose a method to calculate the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with a material using the concepts of computational absorption and relaxation blocks. However, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/559,093 does not disclose methods and systems for calculating the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with materials for the cases of electron transfer, energy transfer and up-conversion. All of the just mentioned phenomena cannot be modeled by absorption and relaxation blocks alone. Electron transfer is the transfer of an electron from a first molecule or optically responsive material to a second molecule or electron acceptor material. Energy transfer is the transfer of energy from a first electron in a first molecule or optically responsive material to a second electron in a second molecule or energy acceptor material. Up-conversion is an electronic process in which two energetically excited electrons exchange energy, wherein the first electron gains energy and goes to a higher energy level and the second electron loses an equal amount of energy and goes to a lower energy level. Also not disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/559,093 are methods, software applications and computer graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to allow a user to design an energy level diagram for a virtual material that includes electronic transitions between the energy levels and to subsequently simulate the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with the virtual material. Furthermore, calculations simulating the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with complex materials that have two or more different compositions or that have two or more layers with different compositions are also not disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/559,093.
It would be desirable to develop a method, system and software structure for simulating electromagnetic radiation interactions with materials that utilize graphical user interfaces to provide a visual representation of the material properties, to provide user manipulated icons to construct modified energy level diagrams for the materials, and to provide a visual representation and manipulated icons to visualize and build a virtual sample of a monolithic or layered material with layers possibly made of different compositions. Such graphical user interfaces would allow a user to utilize a unified approach to simulate complex optical processes in materials by dividing the complex interaction into a series of simple computational modules represented by icons that can be easily combined to simulate the interaction. Furthermore, it would be desirable to have a unified set of modules that include absorption processes, relaxation processes, electron transfer processes, energy transfer processes and up-conversion processes. It would also be desirable to simultaneously determine the electronic populations of the energy levels of the material and all its different composites and different layers, and to determine how the electromagnetic radiation propagates through the material while, at the same time, accounting for nonlinear optical effects in the material.